Royal Dutch Shell Plc says its proposed $70 billion takeover of BG Group Plc will boost dividends and share buybacks for investors. North Sea workers in fear of their jobs after a collapse in oil prices will hope they’re as lucky.
Shell, employing about 2,400 across the North Sea, targets $2.5 billion of pretax “synergies” a year across the globe from the deal, including staff cuts.
“There are no guarantees in life,” said Chief Executive Officer Ben Van Beurden, asked if the deal would lead to cuts in the U.K. “Irrespective of what happens, we will have to look at how we make the North Sea a strong and healthy province again.”
Even before the latest plans, The Hague-based company said March 26 that about 250 positions would go in Aberdeen, the Scottish city at the center of the U.K. oil and gas industry.
“We expect synergies globally, which would include job reductions and office consolidation,” Kayla Macke, a Shell spokeswoman, said Wednesday in an e-mailed reply to questions. Details will be provided later, she said.
Ah, I’ve been waiting for this to happen ... the mega-mergers derby to begin, the starting gun being the current oil price slump.
And it turns out to be Shell that got out of the gate first, which might surprise a few stock market pundits who know far more than ever I will about deal making or indeed horse making form than I ever will.
However, unless you count the company’s $4.5-5billion takeover of Enterprise Oil in 2002, then Shell was conspicuously absent from the Mega-mergers Cup Race sparked by the late 1997 through 1999 oil price slump that sparked consolidation among a crop of listed Western oilcos and big supply chain brands.
Naturally, there’s been a heap of punditry spewed so far as a result of Shell deciding that it wants to pick off BG Group.
However, even I can see a number of good reasons for this particular deal, particularly on the assets portfolio front. And so-on and so-forth.
BG boss Helge Lund is set to enjoy a bumper pay package that could be worth more than £20 million, despite agreeing to a takeover just two months into the job.
Mr Lund is likely to stay on until the completion of the deal, expected to take about a year, which will see the exploration firm swallowed up by Royal Dutch Shell.
The scale of his planned remuneration caused an outcry last year before it was trimmed slightly and pegged to stringent performance criteria by the company as it sidestepped a potential shareholder revolt.
Shell has sought an injunction against Greenpeace activists after Arctic drilling protesters boarded an oil rig in the Pacific.
Half a dozen Greenpeace members had approached the rig, the Polar Pioneer, in inflatable boats and scaled the platform.
The Transocean-owned rig is being sent on a vessel called the Blue Marlin to Seattle before heading to the Arctic, according to Greenpeace.
Shares in BG Group have risen by more than a third after it was revealed the company was in talks with oil major Shell.
The deal, which broke last night, began as BG Group confirmed speculation it was in talks with the company.
It has since been confirmed that its board has backed an offer from Shell for a £47billion takeover.
The companies have unveiled details of the merger in a statement to the London Stock exchange.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc is set to acquire BG Group Plc in what would be the largest energy deal this year, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Buying BG would be Shell’s largest acquisition since the 40.7 billion-pound ($60.3 billion) merger of its Dutch and UK parent companies in 2005, according to data compiled.
It would unite the UK’s first- and third-largest natural gas producers.
Arctic-drilling protesters from Greenpeace climbed aboard a Royal Dutch Shell Plc oil rig Monday as it was transported across the Pacific Ocean northwest of Hawaii.
Six Greenpeace members approached the rig, the Polar Pioneer, in inflatable boats and scaled the platform, according to a statement from the group.
The Transocean Ltd.-owned rig is being sent on a vessel called the Blue Marlin to Seattle before heading to the Arctic, according to Greenpeace.
Shell has a new boss at the helm of its UK North Sea business after Glen Cayley, who was the oil and gas giant’s upstream director for the region, left to join the new Oil and Gas Authority (OGA).
Paul Goodfellow took over as Shell’s upstream vice-president for the UK and Ireland last month in a low-profile change.
One of his first tasks was to oversee last week’s announcement of 250 job cuts and changes to offshore shift patterns.
Mr Goodfellow was previously unconventionals vice-president, US and Canada, for Shell’s upstream business in the Americas.
Before that, he was onshore development vice-president in the Americas upstream operations, with responsibility for field development planning, technical and technology functions.
Oil giant Shell has moved one step closer to oil and gas exploration in the Arctic after the US Interior Department upheld a lease sale from 2008.
In 2012 the company had suffered a number of mishaps in the region.
Now the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will consider Shell’s exploration plan and perform an environmental assessment on it.
The assessment is expected to take at least 30 days to complete.
Shell has delayed drilling of a $100million-plus exploration well off Australia’s north-west coast.
The Shell Cronus-1 well had been due to start drilling in the Browse Basin but has been delayed until later in the year.
It comes after a number of wells were also deferred including Japan’s Inpex Corporation and Santos, while a number of other companies have sought modifications to terms.
Helix Energy Solutions Group and oil major Shell have signed a multi-year contract to provide well intervention services in the Gulf of Mexico.
The agreement will utilise Helix's deepwater well intervention semi-submersible, the 04000.
It has already been performing work for Shell since 2011 under a Master Service Agreement.
The Libra consortium has confirmed the presence of a hydrocarbon column approximately 200 metres deep in reservoirs 220km offshore from the city of Rio de Janeiro.
Informally known as C1, the well is located in the Santos Basin.
Oil major Shell will reduce the number of staff and agency contractors working on its North Sea operations by 250.
The company said it would be making a number of changes to both staffing numbers and shift patterns.
It is not yet clear how many staff and contractors specifically will be affected.
Shell has completed the sale of its OML (Oil Mining Lease) 29 and the Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL) in the Eastern Niger Delta for $1.7billion.
The subsidiary, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, said its interests have been assigned to Aiteo Eastern E&P company limited.
The divestment is part of the strategic review of SPDC’s onshore portfolio and is in line with the federal government of Nigeria’s aim of developing the country’s upstream oil and gas business.
Oil major Shell could soon be allowed to drill for oil in the Arctic.
A decision on whether to grant permission will be made by the US Department of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell later this week.
If approved, the company would be able to drill in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas of the Arctic near Alaska.
Oil major Shell has completed the sale of its stake in a Nigerian oil field for $737million.
The company is nearing the completion of a strategic asset review in the West African country.
Shell is looking for a buyer for its Frederica Refinery in Denmark.
The oil major has also agreed to sell both its retail and commercial fuel marketing operations in Denmark to Couche-Tard.
Shell boss Ben van Beurden received a pay package worth a total of £19.5million in 2014, the oil and gas giant's latest annual report shows.
The figure includes a £1.4million salary, a £3.3million bonus, £10.7million pension top-up and various other benefits.
Pemex Exploracion y Produccion can’t recover hundreds of millions of dollars lost on Mexican condensate smuggled across the Texas border by bandits and sold to Shell Chemical LP, ConocoPhillips Co., BASF Corp. and other buyers that didn’t know the feedstock was stolen, a federal appeals court ruled.
A Houston federal judge threw out the claims last year after finding Mexico’s national oil company waited too long to pursue US buyers of its stolen natural gas liquids, after it failed to halt the thefts on its side of the border.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc and the United Steelworkers’ union will resume talks Monday on a new labor contract after ending discussions today without a resolution to the largest oil worker strike since 1980.
The two sides will meet in Houston, the union said in a statement. The discussions come amid a walkout that’s widened to 12 refineries accounting for almost 20 percent of the capacity in the US Shell is leading the negotiations with the 30,000-strong United Steelworkers on behalf of companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp.
Subsea 7 has been awarded a two-year extension by Shell for two Underwater Services Contracts (USCs) worth $240million.
The company said the Life of Field contract extensions for Diving Support Vessel (DSV) and Remotely Operated Vehicle Support Vessel (ROVSV) services will both commence in 2016.
Subsea 7 will also continue to provide subsea construction, inspection, repair and maintenance and decommissioning services to Shell’s UK offshore fields and facilities.
A new maintenance support ship for Shell’s southern North Sea gas operations made its first appearance in UK waters at the weekend.
Shell said the vessel, named Kroonborg, would change the way the company and partner Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM) operated more than 50 gas producing platforms.
It is expected to reduce the cost of operating smaller gas fields, which are becoming increasingly prevalent, by improving the productivity and safety of maintenance engineers.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc has withdrawn an application to develop an oil-sands bitumen mine in northern Alberta to focus on existing projects.
Shell will continue to hold the Pierre River mining leases and will reapply for regulatory approval “when the time is right,” Shell Canada President Lorraine Mitchelmore said in a statement Monday.
“The Pierre River Mine remains a very long-term opportunity for us but it’s not currently a priority,” she said in the statement.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc and the United Steelworkers, which represents 30,000 US oil workers, are said to be planning to restart talks this week to resolve a labor dispute as more workers joined in the nation’s biggest refinery strike since 1980.
The two sides will meet on Wednesday for the first time since negotiations broke up on Feb. 20 without a deal, according to two people familiar with the talks.
The USW, with members at more than 200 refineries, fuel terminals, pipelines and chemical plants across the US, ordered workers last week at Motiva Enterprises LLC’s Port Arthur refinery in Texas, the nation’s largest, to join a nationwide walkout, and issued notices for three other plants to go on strike.
The United Steelworkers, representing more than 30,000 US oil workers, instructed members to reject a seventh labor contract offered by Royal Dutch Shell Plc as the biggest refinery strike since 1980 dragged on.
The proposal, the first one made by Shell since February 5 on behalf of companies including Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp., “fails to improve safety” in an enforceable way, the USW said in a text message, instructing local units to prepare to join the strike “if called upon.”
Ray Fisher, a spokesman for The Hague, Netherlands-based Shell, said the company had no comment beyond saying the two sides met.
